Xref: utzoo comp.windows.misc:1369 comp.windows.x:18611 comp.windows.news:1933 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!sun-barr!ccut!kogwy!wnoc-tyo-news!sragwa!sravd.sra.JUNET From: erik@sravd.sra.JUNET (Erik M. van der Poel) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Look and Feel? Or just Look? Message-ID: <1463@sragwa.sra.co.jp> Date: 18 Feb 90 06:09:23 GMT References: <671@tci.bell-atl.com> <1907@cbnewsi.ATT.COM> <1990Feb14.201536.29437@sq.sq.com> <5348@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Sender: news@sragwa.sra.co.jp Reply-To: erik@sra.co.jp (Erik M. van der Poel) Followup-To: comp.windows.misc Organization: Software Research Associates, Inc., Japan Lines: 90 In article <5348@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Bruce Barnett writes: > I have seen a lot of people on the net "judge" Motif vs. Open Look > mostly on the overall look of a UI, or else they select it because it > is what their vendor has supplied. > > ... > > How convenient is the scrollbar? Good question. How many times have you had to check, very carefully, a large number of lines of text, one by one? In such a situation: A. You want to scroll exactly one line at a time. B. If you accidentally go too far, you want to scroll back one line. C. Or you may want to scroll exactly one page at a time. Now let's see how well some scrollbars meet these requirements. I obviously don't know about all existing scrollbars, but here are some. I expect that the NeWS people and others will follow up about scrollbars that I do not mention. X11R4 Athena scrollbar A. This scrollbar returns the position of the mouse relative to the end of the scrollbar when pointer button 1 or 3 is pressed. Xterm, for example, uses this distance to determine how much to scroll. So it is very difficult to find out where to position the mouse to scroll exactly one line. Of course, it is up to the application to decide what to do with the value returned by the scrollbar, but in any case, the appearance of the scrollbar does not make it immediately obvious to the user what needs to be done to scroll exactly one line. B. This scrollbar makes it easy to scroll up or down using pointer button 1 or 3. C. It is difficult to scroll exactly one page (see above). Motif & HP(Xw) scrollbars A. The arrows at the ends of the scrollbar make it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Since the arrows are at the ends of the scrollbar, the user must move the mouse all the way to the other end to scroll in the other direction. C. It is impossible to scroll exactly one page. Open Look scrollbar A. The arrows in the elevator make it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Though the arrows are close together, the user must still move the mouse to scroll in the other direction. C. It is easy to scroll exactly one page, once the user finds out that clicking beneath the elevator can be used for this purpose. X10R4 xterm scrollbar (a classic) A. The up-and-down arrow button makes it easy to scroll exactly one line. B. Since the up arrow and down arrow are in one area, it is easy to scroll in either direction using mouse buttons 1 and 3. C. It is easy to scroll exactly one page, once the user finds out that the shift key is held down for this purpose. I could go on and on about the user interface, and also about the programmer's interface, but I think I'll stop here. Just one last thing: I have hacked the Xw scrollbar to produce one that meets all of my 3 requirements. I could send copies to anyone who is interested. Erik M. van der Poel erik@sra.co.jp (Japan) SRA, 1-1-1 Hirakawa-cho, Chiyoda-ku erik%sra.co.jp@uunet.uu.net (USA) Tokyo 102 Japan. TEL +81-3-234-2692 erik%sra.co.jp@mcvax.uucp (Europe)